Brain Puppet
by Fluky
Summary: It’s just, y’know, stuff you think about when you’ve got a psychopath rampaging through your brain. [VirgilRichie]


**Disclaimer:** Static Shock belongs to a lot of people who aren't me. This makes me a very sad bunny.

**Warning:** This contains spoilers for episode #22 (Attack of the Living Brain Puppets), plus _very_ mild ones for episode #9 (Winds of Change). Just for anyone who cares.

* * *

Richie's agenda for the day: Winning the class presidential election, getting the school to fix the vending machines, and having a mentally unbalanced girl telepathically tap into his mind and run it through her hands like a metaphorical sieve.

Uh. Maybe not the latter.

"Vee-- ee?" Richie lost all strength in his knees and semi-collapsed, his thighs locking together to keep him upright. He felt suddenly dizzy as all the blood drained from his face, and he tried his best to keep from going cross-eyed. Tried his best, failed, and attempted to kick Madelyn out of his head. He scrunched up his face.

It stuck.

Damn.

_You shouldn't mess with me, Richie._

Richie felt as though someone was physically shifting the contents of his brain left and right.

_Hm__ Well, now this is interesting._

"Madelyn?" he asked. All he heard escaping from his lips was a light "uhh".

_Obviously._ Richie could almost feel the eyeroll. A vague picture of Virgil at the age of five popped up in his mind's eye. _He nominated me, y'know._

"Yeah, because you hassled him."

_He was looking for his book in a bush._

"Yeah, well," Richie struggled, "y'know Virgil."

_I don't. _

A picture of the two, aged ten, bent over laughing, arms around each other's shoulders.

"Oh. Yeah. Well." Richie would have shrugged, if he could move. "He does that a lot. Lose his books. In, uh, bushes. Drains too, sometimes. There was this once when--" a picture of Virgil grinning "-- he brought this book with him to camp, and he went climbing and somehow got the book lost in a tree."

A pause. _You're lying._

"How d'you know?"

Another eyeroll that Richie could feel._ I'm in your mind, you moron._

"Oh yeah. There's that," Richie conceded. "Speaking of which… uh, you breathe any purple gas recently?"

_What's it to you?_

"Nothing. Just curious."

_I'm curious as to why you're not freaking out about me being in your head._

"Actually, I am, but I kinda have to be able to move to prove it."

A manic laugh. Richie mentally winced. "Y'know, it's really creepy when you do that."

_So?__ What do you care?_

"No need to get tetchy," Richie raised imaginary hands in mock surrender, "it's just, y'know, stuff you think when you've got a psycho rampaging through your brain."

_Psycho? Is that what you think I am?_ Richie felt as if his brain had suddenly been set on fire. _I'm in your head, Richie. Don't try and make me do something stupid._

"Riiiight. Good idea." Involuntarily, an image of a masked boy in navy blue and white sprang to mind. Richie quickly stuffed it away as Madelyn dragged out another mental snapshot of Virgil and Richie.

_You sure have a lot of memories of him._

"He's… a great friend."

Silence. _That must be nice_, she said, and did Richie detect a note of bitterness in her voice?

"Uh… yeah. Look, Madelyn, he's standing right there, so if you'd just--"

_Shut up._

"He'll notice, y'know."

_So what? I'll just control his mind too._

"What for?" Richie imagined himself quirking an eyebrow, and wondered if Madelyn could see it. "What was the point of taking over Joey, Madelyn? What was the point of taking over me?"

Pause_. I want to be class president._

"Gee, that's ambitious. And you want to do so by cheating?"

Eyeroll. _Like you bringing up the topic of vending machines wasn't cheating._

"How is it cheating? The good people need their food."

_That's not a platform! Neither you nor Joey know a thing about being class president!_

"And you do? What's your platform? 'Vote for me and I won't turn you into a brain puppet'?"

_I'm the best candidate for this. I work hard. They don't know. They're all so blinded by you two and your school status._

"Status?"

_It's not a fair election. It's a popularity contest._

"It's not so difficult to win support, y'know. Be friendly to people, and they'll be friendly back."

Snort. _Yeah, right. I've only been doing so my whole life. _

"Maybe you're not going about it the right way."

An angry silence. A moving image was slapped to the front of Richie's mind. Richie impulsively grinned, then wished he could take it back, then realized that Madelyn could probably still hear what he was thinking and mentally kicked himself. He briefly wondered if he could kick Madelyn by doing so.

_You could try._

Damn.

_Hunh__ Static sure makes you happy pretty fast._

"Uh… sure. I mean, heh, who doesn't like Static?"

_Aside from the civilian injuries and amount he costs the city in property damage every time he butts heads with some supervillian? _Purple-smeared lips twisted into a smirk. _I wrote an article on superheroism last month for the school paper._

"I didn't see it."

A derisive snort._ That's 'cause Frieda and Daisy are too busy worshipping Static to see the truth._

"Static does keep Dakota pretty safe, y'know."

_When he's not covered in water._ A mental image of Static dripping from head to toe popped into mind.

"It's the same for Hotstreak," Richie argued.

_Hotstreak's__ got fire powers. Plus, he never went around saying stupid phrases like… what was it? "I put a shock to your system?" That was lame._

Richie felt just a bit indignant. "That was cool. All superheroes have a catchphrase."

_Y'mean__ like Batman?_

"Superman had one once."

_Him and who else?_

"Um." Richie racked his mind for names. "Robin."

_And?_

"Wonderwoman. And… uh, Superman. And Robin, and… hunh. Well, Static's was cool."

_Please._ Richie could feel another eyeroll coming and, yep, there it was. It was no wonder Madelyn's eyes were so large, what with all the exercise they got rolling around in her skull.

_Hmm._

"'Hmm'?"

_You have a lot of Static, too._ Another image of Static appeared as if on cue. Richie blinked as Static flew toward him, grinning, and… took his mask off.

Madelyn gasped.

"That was a Halloween thing," Richie said quickly. "Last year. Me 'n' Virgil, we were doing a superhero kinda theme, and I went as Green Lantern 'cause y'know, that ring thing's kinda cool, and Vee went as Static and, heh, they looked so alike--"

_Wait._ The image rewound back to Static flying toward Richie, grin on his face. Almost as if on widescreen TV, the image squashed into half and another image of Richie and Virgil grinning, arms around each other was placed beside it.

"And, I mean, the coincidence--" Richie was fumbling now. Acting had never been one of his strong points.

_Why hadn't I seen it before?_ Madelyn's eyes were wide, lips slightly agape. _The hair.__ The skin color. The lame catchphrase._

"It was a cool catchphrase!" Richie yelled.

_I didn't know Hawkins was a bang baby. Interesting._

Richie wasn't quite sure he liked how she'd said that last word. The freeze-frame of Static disappeared and was replaced by a quick flip-through of images and memories of Static, making Richie wince at the miasma of color. Madelyn paused at a short clip of Richie snapping at Virgil for 'always' being with Daisy and neglecting his superhero duties.

_Hmm._

"What're you--"

Almost as if on video, the still picture of Richie and Virgil was magnified and zoomed into. Virgil's hand was on Richie's shoulder; Richie's hand was on Virgil's waist.

_Oh. Ohhhhh. _

"What?"

_You have a thing for Hawkins, don't you?_

Richie was answering before he could even think about it. "Yes. I mean, no! I mean, what?"

_That explains the millions of clips._

"He's just a friend!"

_Ooh, this one's interesting._ A moving image of a sweaty Static appeared, stripping off his uniform to change for civvies in the gas station.

"I--"

_Don't bother. _Madelyn's smile twisted even further, almost putting the Cheshire Cat's to shame. _I understand. I wrote an essay on homosexuality._

"You don't--"

_Does he know? Is the feeling mutual?_

"I'm not gay!"

_Really._ Thank God, no eyeroll. Instead, worse-- Madelyn replayed the clip of Static stripping off his uniform, pausing it when he was dressed only in a pair of white boxers and zoomed in to the picture. _Tell me you don't have the hots for him._

"Y'know, it's things like this that explain why you don't have any friends."

If Madelyn heard it, she ignored it. _Wow_, she mused,_ he's ripped. Who woulda thought little slacker Science nerd Hawkins would actually have muscle definition?_

"He gets it all from being Static," Richie said, then mentally slapped himself.

_Ripped, smart and a superhero?_ The picture mushed into half, and there was another rapid cycling of images before pausing at a huge image of Virgil's lips.

Richie almost died.

_Think about it._ The image cycled back to that of Virgil half-naked. _The things you want to do. _Madelyn smirked. _Or the things I could make you do…_

"You're not--" Richie felt himself stepping forward and arching his body against Virgil's, his fingers threading into sweat-dampened dreadlocks and their noses touching, so close that he could feel Virgil's warm eggs-and-bacon breath tickling his lips as the dark-skinned teenager slipped his arms around Richie's waist and closed his eyes…

Richie snapped out of it. He pushed Virgil away, albeit with some effort. "You get a sick pleasure out of doing this, don't you."

_I get my kicks._

"Ugh," Richie muttered to himself. "Don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it." Both images disappeared, only to be replaced by another image of Virgil.

Richie scowled and thought again.

Virgil smiling.

Virgil scowling.

Virgil soaked in the rain.

Virgil pulling a face.

Bananas.

Bananas? Richie frowned. The vending machines weren't working. Bananas, and Virgil, and oh God, wasn't there something vaguely Freudian about bananas and did Madelyn know and--

_I do now. Thanks for the Psychology lesson._

Never mind.

_Anything else you'd like to share?_

"My head's not a video library, Madelyn!" Richie yelled.

_I--_

"Richie?" a male voice called, and Richie slumped forward and was caught in strong dark arms as something drained out of his mind and slithered away. Near the thick stage curtains, Madelyn reeled back, eyes wide and shocked. She looked at Virgil and Richie, and her mouth narrowed and twisted into a grin.

"You," she said to Virgil, "you're… interesting." She laughed manically and ran away.

Virgil stared. "What was that about?"

* * *

**Author's Note:** This is my first Static Shock fic, so be nice. I'm not actually too fond of the ending, but if my memory's correct, that's pretty much what Virgil said after Madelyn did her madwitch!cackle and pranced away. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong-- I wrote this all from memory in, like, half an hour. Did anyone else notice that in episode #22 when Madelyn went into Richie's head all that Richie thought about was Virgil, Virgil and Static taking off his mask to be Virgil? The boy is _obsessed_. 


End file.
